I’ve had a rough week.  Not because the transmission went on my car.  Not because my computer was on the shelf for a few days while we worked out some spyware issues.  It wasn’t that my son broke a bracket on his braces, or that our whiz-bang forecasting system at work crashed while we were racing a deadline to finish our 2010 plan.  All of these things seemed trivial after we received the real bad news.

As I was getting ready for work yesterday, my wife received a call from her cousin.  Her cousin’s husband , the Big Guy, had been battling cancer for a few months.  He struggled mightily to overcome it, but apparently he was sicker than we thought.  The Big Guy passed away during the night.  And that folks, was the cherry on top of the shit sundae of my week.

I’d always liked the Big Guy, ever since we sat next to each other at some family party many years ago.  He had suffered through many health issues, including multiple heart attacks, but always had a vibrant air about him.  He reveled us with stories about his vacations to Italy; how he shunned the canned Perillo Tours, and ventured about to find restaurants and museums on his own.

After that introduction, I’d always seek out the Big Guy at family gatherings.  He always had a new story to tell, and I looked forward to hearing them.  And I wasn’t the only one.  The Big Guy would always draw a crowd.  He’d offer advice on new restaurants, or a new wine that he had sampled.  He was very popular, and I never heard anyone say a bad word about him.  We promised to get together more frequently, but you know how that goes.

The Big Guy embodied many of the qualities that I hold dear.  He was a risk taker, a bon vivant, who loved to try new things.  Not content with sitting around the house watching soap operas after retiring from his teaching job, he started a new passion: painting.  He was pretty talented, and he showed us pictures of his artwork at my son’s graduation party last June.

But the thing that I’ll remember most about the Big Guy was his devotion to his wife.  They were clearly an ideal match.  You couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.  They were the perfect compliment to each other, and by the look in their eyes, they understood that.  His passing will be especially hard on her.

Tomorrow, I’ll see the Big Guy for the last time, just before his funeral.  Only this time, he won’t have any new stories to tell me.  I guess that I’ll have to make do with the ones that he shared in the past.

That’s why this week sucked big time.

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